Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 2:18

"What profiteth the graven image, that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, even the teacher of lies, that he that fashioneth its form trusteth therein, to make dumb idols?" — Habakkuk 2:18 (ASV)

What profits - (Has profited) הועיל מה. Samuel warned them, Serve the Lord with all your heart, and turn ye not aside; for (it would be) after vanities which will not profit nor deliver for they are vain: and Jeremiah tells of their past: their prophets prophesied by Baal; and after things יועילי לא which profit not, have they gone. Elsewhere the idol is spoken of as a thing which will not profit (future); My people hath changed its glory יועיל בלא for that which profiteth not, (Jeremiah 2:8, Jeremiah 2:11). So Isaiah says: Who hath formed a god, הועיל לבלתי not to profit? (Isaiah 44:9, Isaiah 44:10). The makers of a graven image are all of them vanity, and their desirable things יועילו בל will not profit.

The graven image, that the maker therefore has graven it? - What did Baal and Ashtaroth profit you? What did it ever avail but to draw down the wrath of God?

Even so, it will not profit the Chaldean. Just as their idols did not avail them, so too they need not fear them.

Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar were propagandists of their own belief and would destroy, if they could, all other worship, false or true. Nebuchadnezzar is thought to have set up his own image (Daniel 3:0). Antichrist will set himself up as God (2 Thessalonians 2:4; Revelation 13:15–17).

We may take warning at least from our own sins. If we gained no profit at all from them, neither will similar things profit others. The Jews, in the main, learned this in their captivity.

The molten image and teacher of lies - It is all the same whether by “teacher of lies” we understand the idol or its priest. For its priest gave it its voice, just as its maker created its form. It could only seem to teach through the idol-priest. Isaiah used the title “teacher of lies” for the false prophet (Isaiah 9:14). It is all the same. Zechariah combines them (Zechariah 10:2): The teraphim have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie, and have had false dreams.

That the maker of his work trusts therein - This was the special folly of idolatry. The thing made must necessarily be inferior to its maker. It was one of the corruptions of idolatry that the maker of his own work should trust in what was wholly his own creation—what he himself, not God, created; what had nothing except what it had from himself.

He uses the very words that express the relation of man to God, “the Framer” and “the thing framed” (Isaiah 29:16): O your perverseness! Shall the framer be accounted as clay, that the thing made should say of its Maker, He made me not, and the thing framed say of its Framer, He hath no hands?

The idol-maker is “the creator of his creature,” of his god whom he worships. Again, the idol-maker makes “dumb idols” (literally, “dumb nothings”)—in themselves nothing, and having no power apart from themselves; and what is uttered in their name are but lies.

And what else are man’s idols of wealth, honor, and fame, which he makes for himself—creatures of his own hands or mind, their greatness existing chiefly in his own imagination, before which he, who is the image of God, bows down?